Cool New Project FeederWatch Website Launches Ahead of New Season

The 2013-2014 Project FeederWatch season begins on November 9. This fun citizen-science project is a great way to turn time spent enjoying your feeder into valuable data that scientists can use to understand bird populations. If you’ve never counted before or if you’re a returning FeederWatcher, you can sign up here.

Project FeederWatch is open to people of all skill levels and backgrounds, including children, families, individuals, classrooms, retirees, youth groups, nature centers, and bird clubs. The seasons run from early November until April each year, and a small participation fee helps to partially cover project expenses and staff support.

Brand new FeederWatch website

To get ready for the new season, we’ve relaunched the Project FeederWatch website. It’s full of beautiful designs and smart features to help you learn, explore, identify, and record and review your counts.

Among the new features:

A new Photo Upload tool lets you submit photos through our website rather than by email, and it displays them beautifully, too. The tool also allows us to take in entries for our BirdSpotter photo contest (returning for its second year!).

A new tool called Common Feeder Birds lets you explore which birds are most common in your region of the country and tells you which foods and feeders work best for them.

Our newly designed Tricky ID pages help give you all the information, side-by-side photos, and tips you need to sort out confusing birds such as accipiters and finches, with more on the way.

Why become a FeederWatcher?

FeederWatch data provide long-term information about bird population biology that cannot be detected by any other available method. When thousands of FeederWatchers in communities across North America count birds and send their tallies to the FeederWatch database, the result is a wealth of data, which FeederWatch scientists analyze to track broad-scale movements of winter bird populations and long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance.

With each season, FeederWatch increases in importance as a unique monitoring tool for more than 100 bird species that winter in North America. To see some of our findings:

New participants are sent a Research Kit with complete instructions for participating. You provide the feeder(s) and seed. In addition to the kit, U.S. participants receive a the Cornell Lab’s newsletter, Living Bird News. Canadian participants receive Bird Studies Canada’s quarterly publication, BirdWatch Canada.

There is a $15 annual participation fee for U.S. residents ($12 for Cornell Lab members). Canadians can participate by joining Bird Studies Canada for CAN$35. The participation fee covers materials, staff support, web design, data analysis, and a year-end report (Winter Bird Highlights). Project FeederWatch is supported almost entirely by participation fees. Without the support of our participants, this project wouldn’t be possible—so thank you!

Hi Phyllis – Evening Grosbeaks are very erratic in the winter. They are much more common in the West than in the East, but they still move around considerably depending on what kinds of natural foods are available. It’s quite likely that they have moved to a different part of Washington or neighboring states. Hang in there and they’ll most likely return. We have a couple more suggestions in this Frequently Asked Question, including how to check eBird records to see if people near you have been seeing them: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/faq#q-there-aren-t-1 Good luck! – Hugh